Back to Brokeback Mountain
by Katatonia
Summary: This does deal with slash umm...just WHAT was the film about? but it's from Alma Junior's POV post the end of the movie. AJ is the eldest daughter of Ennis del Mar.
1. Chapter 1

Annie Proulx and Ang Lee own the characterisation - I'm just playing in their sandbox. This is from Alma Junior's POV.

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My daddy weren't there much for me and Jenny when I was growing up. Oh, he made time for the important things – he even risked the job he'd had for fifteen years to walk me down the aisle. But he weren't there for the little stuff – the not so important things that still mattered to me and Jenny when we were little.

Even when he were there, he was quiet – almost distant, like he was waiting for someone to suddenly appear. 'Parently my daddy's always been like that, since before my momma ever met him, and he didn't really change much from what I can remember. 'Course, he's had a tough life, and few things really made him truly happy. He weren't even happy on my wedding day – proud looking, but not happy. He took to Curt though, despite thinking his little girl could do a lot better than a 'roughneck'.

When I recall my daddy being happy, I remember him setting off on one of his fishing trips. Those ended when I was twenty-four though, and my daddy's never really been happy since. My momma said once that he was with an ol' fishing buddy when I was six and asked her, too young to know that the tightness around her eyes meant I shouldn't have asked.

After one thanksgiving, when my daddy had stormed out after an argument with my momma, the only thing me and Jenny ever caught was 'that damned Jack Twist' when my momma was explaining to my stepdaddy why daddy had just run outta there. By then both me and Jenny were old enough not to bring up that incident again, even though I wanted desperately to know just who Jack Twist was. We discussed it 'tween ourselves, though, and came to the conclusion that he had had something to do with the divorce 'tween momma and daddy.

About two years after me and Curt got married, I was over at my daddy's trailer with my little baby, and I asked him. I just came right out and asked who Jack Twist was. I don't think I've ever seen my daddy more shocked in my life. He asked me where I'd heard that name, and I told him that momma had mentioned him way back on that thanksgiving.

It was the only time I've ever seen tears in my daddy's eyes. He sat back with a sigh, looked straight at me, and just said that Jack was an old friend of his – that they had herded sheep up someplace called Brokeback Mountain, and that they used to go fishing before Jack died. I thought that's why my daddy was so sad, because his friend must've been young when he died.

Little Annie and I left soon after that. Daddy waved us off from the door of his trailer, but he seemed really sad, and I wish I'd never brought that name up.

Another time, about ten years after that, I was visiting my daddy and tidying up his place a bit. I went to put a jacket away in his closet, and I noticed something on the inside of the door. There were two shirts hanging up on the same hanger, a dark blue denim one under a plaid one, and a postcard with a picture of a mountain on it pinned up beside them. There was a dark stain on the sleeves that looked a little like dried blood, and I got so scared. Scared that my daddy might've done something bad.

I left soon after, and on the way home those damned shirts and that postcard were all I could think about. By the time I reached home, I had made up my mind to trust my daddy – I knew he could not have done anything so bad.


	2. Chapter 2

Eight years later, my daddy was lying in a hospital bed, dying. The doctors said it was a cancer, but I knew that my poor daddy's heart had enough of the mean old life it had been forced to lead. My momma, my stepdaddy, Jenny, Curt, Annie and I were all gathered around his bed. The doctors said he wouldn't last the night, and I for one wanted to be there for him.

'Round about two in the morning, some little old lady came busting right in. She sure looked meek, and she must have been nearing ninety, but she shooed away those nurses and doctors like they was flies round a sugarbowl. My daddy perked right up when he saw her, and if I hadn't known better, I'd have thought she was his momma by the way she was fussin' over him. He called her Mrs Twist in the faintest whisper I've ever heard, and I saw my momma turn her face away. I knew right then that this old lady was the momma of what had probably been the closest friend my daddy had ever had.

She told him not to worry 'bout a thing, and then she went on to say that her boy was waiting up on Brokeback Mountain. My daddy smiled up at her.

'You took his ashes up there?' He said, and she just smiled.

'Of course.'

'Round about this time, my momma got up and walked over to the window, facing away from all of us. Jenny and I just exchanged this look. We knew something was going on, and I was starting to get an inkling as to what.

'He's waiting.' She said again, and he seemed to relax, like he just couldn't feel the pain that those doctors had him on morphine for.

Then he looked away from her, and smiled at me and Jenny both where we sat next to each other. Annie got a smile on her daddy's knee, and my momma turned around to look at him, like she knew that this was it – this was the end. There were tears in her eyes, and she tried to smile at him. It didn't quite work, but he smiled back at her.

And he looked at my stepdaddy.

'You take good care of them.' He said, and my stepdaddy nodded, all seriousness.

His breathin' started becoming real difficult, and he looked past us all. Not at the wall, but as if he were looking at someone standing right there at the foot of the bed. Then the biggest smile I've ever seen on anyone crossed my daddy's face, and he whispered just the one word.

'Jack.'

And I knew that my daddy was home – that he'd gone back to the place where he had been the happiest in his life.

Back to Brokeback Mountain.

THE END - please don't ask for more...this is all there is!


End file.
